Look to the Cloud for X-Cart’s NEXT Service

E-commerce software provider X-Cart has launched its newest service in the cloud.

The company’s first cloud-hosted platform, which has been dubbed as NEXT, brings X-Cart’s functionality to a software-as-a-service (SaaS) platform. Basic features of the NEXT platform include multiple product type options, social media integration, social login, automatic tax calculation, real-time shipping rate calculation, store statistics and analytics, SEO-friendly URLs, meta tags, mobile compatibility and promotional tools.

Moreover, X-Cart is offering NEXT source code to certified developers, which provides them with the opportunity to design new features and customer options. Any extensions or upgrades created by developers will be made available to X-Cart’s partner community via the X-Cart NEXT Marketplace.

“Besides making X-Cart NEXT easy to install, use, scale and upgrade, we’ve erased one of the biggest objections to SaaS e-commerce platforms – the inability to alter the source code for a specific hosted storefront,” says Maxim Vydrin, CEO of X-Cart, adding, “Now our certified developers can take advantage of the benefits of a hosted platform, but with the flexibility of a downloaded software package. We’ve also made this process much easier to implement.”

X-Cart Next is available in four different plans – Starter, Advanced, Business and an Enterprise. That said, the company is also offering a 30-day free trial of the platform. Previous versions of X-Cart’s downloadable e-commerce packages will remain supported and continue to receive upgrades, however, the company is also offering a migration service to current X-Cart merchants that want to adopt NEXT.

Furthermore, merchants looking to leverage the Enterprise plan should know that it can integrate with popular content management system (CMS) Drupal, which means that developers will be able to use existing Drupal extensions to add customization options. It is also important to note that certified developers can earn a 15 to 25 percent recurring commission on new platform sales with X-Cart NEXT’s affiliate program. Since the platform allows certified developers to customize a SaaS store for customers at the source code level, developers will also have a specific Web address to manage those customers, download stores for development and maintenance as well as upload custom modules. Additionally, developers can earn 75 percent for every add-on extension or theme they create, which can be sold in the X-Cart NEXT Marketplace.